City
Morning Brew: Sheppard East LRT Construction Begins, Suspected Terrorists Get Special Treatment, Making French Fries Less Harmful, Fall Report Cards get Axed, Santa Claus Fired for Giving Out Free Candy Canes
Photo: "Come Sit Beside Me, Friend" by DdotG, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
The next section of the Transit City LRT plan is under way, as the symbolic ground-breaking ceremony kicked off construction of the "Sheppard East Light Rail Transit line" (see map below). This one wont likely be a development story marred by thriving businesses suffering during construction, which is a good thing. Instead, it's likely a development story that's mostly ahead of the curve, accounting for future outward growth and densification of the city.
Do suspected terrorists get preferential treatment in prison while they await trial? According to staff at the facility where they're detained, "special accommodations were made for [their] Muslim faith," they had better TV access, and were provided with laptops. With the exception of the TV upgrade, it sounds to me like they're being treated as they should be.
Here's a controversial idea. Rather than encouraging us to not eat really crappy junk foods that are quite bad for us, Health Canada is looking into the possibility of having french fry and potato chip manufacturers add the cancer-fighting, heat-labile enzyme asparaginase to the product before cooking. In theory, this will reduce the quantity of the bad stuff (acrylamide) and not introduce anything harmful.
Much to the delight of teachers (and perhaps some students, and perhaps some parents), Ontario is eliminating the fall report card for elementary students, meaning that graded evaluations will only come twice per school year (rather than three times).
And despite firing Santa Claus (for allegedly handing out free candy canes to kids whose parents opted out of the pay-for-a-photo experience), the Parkway Mall is still seeing... wait, it was already seeing poor sales and shopper volume (according to some shop owners).
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There's no convincing people as ignorant as you of the reality of the job, so I'll tell you what, if I've got it so good as a teacher, come do my job at my salary with the level of interference I get from the parents who have created the problems in the child I am trying to fix. Throw in a bureaucracy of people who left the classroom as fast as they could so they could push paper instead of educate.
What education needs is less ideology, less input from the ignorant, and accountability to the students' potential, not the resentments of their parents.
20 years ago Margarine was <b>-Known-</b> to be better than butter. Now we know that the trans fats were far worse than the saturated fats ever were.
At one point people <b>knew</b> that refined carbs were the best thing for your body, 75 years later we know that refined carbs are just awful for you.
At one point we <b>knew</b> that food contained a few nutrients that our bodies needed (and only needed) to thrive. Carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Some time later we <b>knew</b> that other compounds were important after people got sick from vitamin deficiency. 5 years ago we <b>knew</b> that Omega Fatty acids were also important. And today we <b>know</b> that its not the amount of fatty acid that is important, but the ratio of one fatty acid to another that is key.
The point is, what we don't know about nutrition and how it affects us could fill a stadium. Every few years we find out that we were wrong, then a few years later find out we were wrong again.
The stupid thing is, all of those things we found out that we needed were always there in nature, but we just chose to ignore them and insisted on eating ever increasing amounts of processed food with these things removed (and perhaps add a few of them back in at the end of the processing line instead of just leaving them in to begin with)
My nutritional advice: Avoid processed foods (shop around the edges of the grocery store and prepare food yourself). Avoid anything deep fried. Limit sweetened foods, and especially avoid high-fructose corn syrup.
No one should graduate highschool without scoring a 36 on the IB (basic IB pass is 24), and that should be the minimum standard for all teachers as well. Plus requiring all teachers to have taken 4 calculus, 3 stats, 3 physics, and 2 chemistry courses in University to be eligible for teachers college. Far too many math teachers, never mind other ones, can't explain the utility of algebra and think it's hilarious that they are bad at math, instead of incredibly shameful and a mark of deep ignorance.
Standards need to get much, much higher, social promotion eliminated, and curriculum development removed from our useless politicians and teachers.
As for stress at work? Gimme a break everyone has it.
BlogTO is using an old map of Transit City, the one given to media on Monday has the DRL in it.
Also DRL is supposed to be a subway most likely.
At least, that's how I understand it so far.
I would say that Sheppard East is a strange place to start, but at least that'll make the Sheppard stubway somewhat relevant, maybe. (Full disclosure: I live near said stubway's Bayview Station.)
Eglinton is way more overdue, though I hate to sound like I'm more interested in boosting transit for the relatively wealthy than boosting transit for the relatively.